Product Owner II (Contractor)RealMed

THIS JOB HAS EXPIRED

Join one of the leading Health Information Networks optimizing information exchange between providers (physicians, hospitals, care givers, etc.) and Insurance Payers. Using Agile development and Scrum methodologies, the Product Owner works with the software application developer, Scrum Master and other key scrum roles to implement new and revised features to support many top ranking Health Plans (including BCBS TX, Humana, Wellpoint and many others).

Availity has the powerful tools, actionable insights and expansive network reach that medical businesses need to get an edge in an industry constantly redefined by change.

ROLE SUMMARY
As an Availity Product Owner, you are the domain specialist who owns and drives the vision for the product development project. You are the single person ultimately responsible for its success. In this role, you represent the business in the scrum team and work with user groups and stakeholders to determine what features will be in each product release.
As the bridge between the Product Manager and the delivery team, you must align both parties to a common goal while aggressively managing stakeholder expectations
Empowered to make decisions about the value, priority and detail of the project, your role is critical to the success or failure of the Agile development process.
This leadership position requires that you closely collaborate with the work team on an ongoing basis and guide and direct the team by actively managing the product backlog, quickly answering questions when they arise, providing feedback, and signing off work results. You are accountable for defining what success means for the team and the product. You must ensure that the team remains in the rhythm of continuously delivering customer and business value.
Through thoughtful product design and planning, your ultimate objective is to positively differentiate your assigned products from the competition
This position requires an intimate understanding of the customer and the market as well as a strong passion for the user experience. You must possess the ability to communicate needs and describe requirements, define metrics, guide a development project, and be comfortable leading a cross-functional, self-organizing team (i.e., leading without authority).

WORK ACCOUNTABILITIES

Understand User and Stakeholder Needs
Review the Product Roadmap, supporting business case (charter), financial forecasts and ROI targets to be achieved
Utilize internal resources to research competitive offerings and perception of own products in marketplace
Facilitate on-site sessions with clients and key stakeholders for information gathering and Q&A
Demo working prototypes with customers and stakeholders
Shadow users in the field to collect important information upfront, and gain insight into a ?day in the expand life? of the users, their pain points and underlying issues impeding their productivity and success.

Manage Projects
Fully accountable for the successful completion of assigned projects
Focus is at a project level working on an entire product (all features/functions) or small suite of products.
Projects may be simple or moderately difficult. The level of complexity and risk is now moderate

NOTE: Project complexity/risk generally increases with # of fields, # of transactions involved, degree of volume and usage, # of touch points, and need for integration with vendor/partner. Complexity/risk can also increase when designing a product for an emerging market where the path to market success is unknown

Establish & Groom Backlog
Maintain product backlog
Track progress and re-prioritization of backlog
Groom backlog (add, delete or modify user stories on a regular basis)
Provide oversight of backlog for PO I
Prioritizes backlog based on Business Value (assessment of strategy and financial ROI)
Lead the practice of storyboarding
Write user stories and scenarios.
Develop and prioritize user stories based on the understanding of the overall business benefit and the relative cost of each piece of work
Bring user stories to the ?ready? state prior to sprint commitments with just-in-time documentation and acceptance criteria
Make sure that the stories are VENTI ? Valuable, Estimable, Negotiable, Testable and Independent
Verify that the customer deliverables of stories, are consistent and agreed-upon
Be available to provide clarification of user stories with little or no help

Guide Development Team

Set the Vision:
Represent the voice of the customer
Provide direction to the Team on the project scope and business objectives

Provide Guidance:
Maintain constant communication with the team.
Make rapid tactical development decisions if they impact product functionality or usability.

Align Team
Participate in Sprint review meetings and providing feedback to the team
Ascertain that the work team agrees on priorities and acceptance criteria
Communicate the impact of changes and align the whole team around it
Verify that the customer deliverables of wireframes, design and acceptance tests are consistent and agreed-upon

Manage Stakeholder Expectations

Manage Scope
Establish and gains stakeholder alignment to a vision of what needs to be accomplished
Prevent customers and users from getting into unnecessary short-term product development trade-offs (may require input from a level 3 PO or higher)
Manage the scope of the product backlog with stakeholders; determine if changes need to be made
Minimize scope changes mid-stream
Work closely with Product Manager to keep the product charter updated; make constant adjustments

Manage Interdependencies
Working closely with other Product Owners & Product Managers:
Identify synergies and dependencies between their roadmaps
Identify and resolve conflicts between two or more verticals

Facilitate Execution

With Development Team
Help the team to estimate development time.
Continually map and manage the scope of iterations & releases to match the team?s capacity
Ensure that the scope of monthly release demos remains realistic with respect to the capacity of the team
Negotiate agreements and persuade effectively at all levels of the organization to resolve issues

Ensure Quality

With User Experience Team Members:
Represent the interests of the Product Manager and End User in the development of the product, helping shape the look, feel and flow of the software
Work with the usability team to ensure testing is done on a regular basis and feedback incorporated into product and aligned with charter
Manage process improvement initiatives.

With QA Team Members:
Form the acceptance criteria and develop relevant test cases
Prioritize the logged defects
Participate in acceptance testing for every release
Confirm the developed product is acceptable to the end user

Track & Monitor Progress

With Scrum Master:
Collaborate with Scrum Master to run successful Release Planning and Sprint Planning team sessions, as well as Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives
Monitor progress and making constant adjustments based on larger strategic objectives
Assist with coordination of project planning, review/demo meetings, shared resource scheduling and celebrations
Stay aware of the status, risks and issues
Track progress and re-prioritization of backlog
Gather, assemble and report product metrics.
Communicates organizational impact of metrics

Release Product
Ascertain that the Customer Team is prepared before release and iteration planning
Actively participate in the release planning meeting with the whole team
Participate in technical release planning.
Document answers to customer technical questions that cannot be answered by sales staff or product support specialists using existing documentation.
Perform product demonstrations at trade shows, online seminars, and other events

WORK EXPERIENCE (Required)
1 - 3 years of progressive work experience designing business processes, process mapping, working on process improvement initiatives and business system design.
Demonstrated mastery using MS Suite products, and flowcharting tools
Experienced in writing business requirements and functional specifications

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS (Required)
Associate degree
NOTE: 1 year of relevant work experience may serve as an equivalent for the associate?s degree

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS (Preferred)
Bachelor?s degree in computer science or a related field of study
NOTE: 2 -4 years of relevant work experience may serve as an equivalent for the bachelor?s degree.